A Case for Growth
Executive Summary
Neff Headwear’s Instagram following stagnated in growth and engagement in 2013. Brandon Powell was tasked with developing a new strategy for growing the profile and re-engaging the fan base. Through multiple initiatives the Instagram following increased by nearly 150K followers in thirteen months organically.
- Increased Instagram followers from 150K in 1 year
- Maintained 20% of posts making the popular page (before it turned into the Discovery Page).
- Created two snowboarding video posts around the Winter X-Games that generated over 1.8M Likes and over 10M impressions.
Challenges
The Instagram profile was in disarray before Brandon began working on it. The company was posting snow, surf, and skate photos along with apparel with no direction or adherence to a strategy. As a result, the various sport managers (snow, surf, and skate) were upset that their particular sport wasn’t being covered when it was relevant.
The company’s goal was to have the most engaging social media profiles in the action sports industry. Because there was no strategy the profile was not appealing to any of their target demos. The followers were based on brand recognition, not engaging content.
How Services Helped
Brandon’s approach was to create a content calendar that took into consideration the time of year and gave appropriate posting weight to whichever sport was in season. This eliminated issues with the teams, and also ensured that the most relevant sport was being pushed to followers at all times.
Working with the in-house photographer, we devised a new image strategy for apparel that focused on bright images and presenting the apparel in use cases.
A hashtagging system was installed to ensure all posts were tagged with relevant industry tags. A robust influencer outreach program was implemented that included Miley Cyrus, Snoop Dogg, and Wiz Khalifa as well as Instagram influencers like King Bach.
Results, ROI, and Future Plans
The result of these efforts was an increase of 150,000 followers in thirteen months, organically.
Additionally, the engagement rate averaged around 25% during Brandon’s management of the profiles.
Brandon’s direct efforts helped Dylan Thompson win a medal for his snowboard video entry at the X Games. The medal was awarded based on fan votes on the athletes video submissions with Dylan’s video garnering over 1M likes on Instagram.
